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THi mm WHICH m hath shewed us. 



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THE LKJHTS WHICH GOD HATH SHEWED US. 



THANKSGIVING DISCOURSE, 

DELIVERED NOV. 28, 18G1. 

IN THE 

West Spruce Slrcct Prcsbylerian Church, Philadelphia, 

BY 

\ 

Rev. W. p. BREED, Pastor. 



PUBLISHED BY REQUEST. 



PHILADELPHIA: 

.JOHN ALEXANDER, TRINTER, 52 SOUTH FOURTH STREET, 
1861. 



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SERMON 



P*. 118: 27. — " God IS the Lord which hath shewed us light. Bind 

THE SACRIFICE WITH CORDS, EVEN UNTO THE HORNS OF THE ALTAR." 

Once more, a voice from the Executive of our com- 
monwealth has reminded us of the relations subsisting 
between the Church and the State. Society has two 
grand departments of interest, the sacred, and the secu- 
lar. Over these, God has ordained two agencies, the 
Church, the custodian of religious truth and instructor 
of men therein, and the State, for the protection of those 
who do w^ell, and for the restraint and punishment of 
transgressors. Both are ordained of God. The apostle, 
no more truly than the magistrate is the " minister of 
God."— (Rom. xiii: 1-4.) 

The specific duties allotted to the one are, of course, 
quite different from those allotted to the other, and yet 
Church and State are twin sisters, both contributing 
to the same general results. Like sunshine and shower, 
the one is not the other, yet both concur in bringing 
on the harvest. 



tmi 



The Church is not the State, and the State is not the 
Church, yet they may, and one day will both compre- 
hend precisely the same elements. Every member of 
the church may be a citizen, and every citizen may be 
a member of the church. 

They may not invade each others given spheres of 
service, and yet they are bound to each other by ties 
powerful and sacred, and are constantly affecting each 
others interests. The Church cannot annul an iniqui- 
tous enactment of the State, but she may, through the 
steady operation of her hallowed instrumentalities, so 
reach the public mind and heart as to bring about the much 
needed reform. The State may not, formally annul 
any decree of the Church, even one consigning atheists 
and heretics to the flames, but she may see to it that 
such a law remain a dead letter on the ecclesiastical 
statute book. 

The State protects the Church, and the Church prays 
for the state. The State by its penalties, terrifies from 
actual crime, the many would-be murderers, robbers 
and housebreakers, who lurk like tigers in our social 
jungles, and the Church by converting them to God, 
relieves the State of these enemies. The Church be- 
stows upon the State the men who most truly and 
purely fill her various offices, and the State gives the 
Church access to her sailors, soldiers, invalids and pri- 
soners, and in treaties with foreign powers, negotiates 
for the admission of her missionaries into the Ijosom of 



mighty heathen empires, and of nations at the ends of 
the earth. 

At all times and under all circumstances, while reli- 
giously refraining from interference with each others 
functions, the Church never tampering with the duties 
of the State, the State never laying unholy hands upon 
the altar of God, they should still sympathize with, and 
lend their influence in furthering the prosperity of each 
other. And in times of peculiar peril, when the State 
is threatened with disintegration and utter overthrow ; 
when doctrines are uttered and maintained at the bayo- 
net's point and the cannon's mouth, which are as un- 
scriptural as they are ruinous, and whose prevalence 
among men would operate like the suspension of the 
law of gravitation in nature, dispersing all things 
in wildest confusion; and when further, the Church 
sees in this threatened dissolution the crippling, if not 
utter extinction of all her great agencies for benevolent 
operation in fields domestic and foreign, every holy 
instinct of her nature impels her, and every solemn obli- 
gation binds her to lift up her voice like a trumpet, and 
ply all her powers in rebuke of the ominous error, and 
in encouragement and support of the imperilled govern- 
ment, ordained of God for his glory and the nation's 
good, and under whose cegis her own resources are de- 
veloped and multiplied. 

And new emphasis is added to the obligation, when 
by the united testimony of defender and assailant, and 



6 

also of enlightened, disinterested foreigners, the smitten 
government is one of the mildest and most beneficent 
ever granted to a nation. 

If the State pass a law authorizing or constraining a 
violation of the Sabbath day, it is one of the most patent 
and imperative of the duties of the church, through the 
press, from the pulpit and in her ecclesiastical courts, to 
charge her erring sister Avith the wrong, and call upon 
her, in the name of the most High, to retrace her steps ! 
Nor may she hesitate to reiterate in the ears of her 
membership the voice of Sinai — " Remember the Sab- 
bath day to keep it holy." And if an unauthorized 
body of men, larger or smaller, assume to free them- 
selves and others from the obligations of citizenship, 
and even of solemn and oft-repeated oaths, and go so 
far as to set on fire the national edifice that covers the 
heads of thirty millions of people — five millions of them 
communicants in evangelical Christian churches — under 
these circumstances to expect the church to hold her 
peace in pulpit. Presbytery and General Assembly, and 
to shrink from defining and properly characterising 
treason and rebellion, and from warning her member- 
ship therefrom, is to accuse her courage, loyalty, or in- 
telligence, or all together. 

Assembled to-day once more for a thanksgiving ser- 
vice, after a most momentous year in the history of the 
world, as well as of our own beloved country, we have 
called your attention to a portion of that noble thanks- 



giving psalm the 118th, the 27th verse of which is a 
kind of embodiment of the whole — " God is the Lord 
whi^h hath showed us light — bind the sacrifice with 
cords, even to the horns of the altar," 

The scene here set before us is one equally vivid, im- 
pressive and instructive. There, in the temple-courts, 
is the altar. Above, upon his glorious throne, is God 
the Lord, " the Father of lights" and the giver of every 
good and perfect gift. Not far off a thanksgiving party 
ajDproaches with their victim, singing as they come, 
" God is the Lord which hath showed us light — bind 
the sacrifice with cords, even unto the horns of the 
altar." 

Beloved ! we to-day are that thanksgiving party — 
here is the altar, yonder is God the Lord who hath 
showed us light, and we are met to bind our sacrifice 
of gratitude even unto the horns of the altar. God is 
the Father of lights — the light of sun and stars; the 
light of life ; the light of reason ; all the lights that 
shine in our homes, in the eyes of our children, and in 
their ruddy cheeks; the light of domestic aftection ; 
and all the lights, greater and lesser, that hang in our 
political sky. 

Let us now proceed to enumerate and meditate upon 
certain of these lights which God had showed us during 
the past year. 

And, first, we remark in general, that they are 
broken lights ; lights mingled with shadows. This in- 



deed is true of all human lights, 
the tale of hnman life. 



The fireside storv is 



" There is no flock however watched or tended, 
But one dead lamb is there ; 
There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended, 
But has one vacant chair." 

So the lights that God hath showed lis the past year, 
have fallen on us through openings in the clouds — 
clouds sometimes very, very dark ! 

As to those of a national character, how could it hv 
otherwise, when within the year the cloud of a gigantic 
civil w\ar has cast its dense, awful shadow athwart 
our affrighted land! During that time, hundreds of 
thousands of men have gone from cottage and palace, 
from workshop and counting-room, from fireside and 
communion talkie, to put on the soldier's mantle, and 
execute the soldier's bloody task ; from hillsides where 
bleating flocks grazed, the raking artillery has thunder- 
ed, and where childrens' voices rang in sport, men have 
fought and filled the ground wdth the bleeding, dying 
and the dead. Often during this year, there has Ijeen — 



"Hurrying to and fro, 
And gathering tears and tremblings of distress, 

And cheeks all pale which, but awhile ago, 
Blushed at the praise of their own loveliness ; 

And — sudden sudden partings such as press 

The life from out young hearts, and choking sighs 

Which ne'er might be repeated." 



Yes, and in ow midst, widows and orphans have been 
multiplied, and every morning, thousands of breakfast 
tables, and every evening, thousands of firesides, lack 
their wonted cheer, because a son, a brother, or a father, 
is away, offering his heart to the bayonet's thrust, or the 
bullet's merciless invasion. 

And if we drop a tear amidst our joys for our own 
sorrows, shall we forget the sorrows of those who have 
made themselves the foes of our most precious inte- 
rests, by making themselves the enemies of our coun- 
try? Have we no tear for desolated Virginia? Who 
will not join us in the lament uttered over her, in 
one of the pulpits of our church, more than a century 



ago? 



"0 Virginia, my country." — For Beloved, we are not 
patriots if Virginia, is not as much our country to-day, 
as is Pennsylvania herself, — " 0, my country shall I 
not lament for thee ! Thou art a valley of vision, 
favored with the light of revelation, and the gospel of 
Jesus; thou hast long been the region of peace and 
tranquility, the land of plenty, ease and liberty ! What 
do I now hear ! I see thy brazen skies, thy parched 
soil, thy withering fields, thy hopeless springs, thy 
scanty harvests ! Methinks I also hear the sound of 
the trumpet and garments rolled in blood !" So spake 
the Rev. Samuel Davies at Hanover, July 20th, 1755. 

And why should we not weep for the woes of Vir- 
ginia, and Carolina and Missouri, although those woes 
have been so wantonly brought upon themselves ? 



10 

Yes, the fact that a gigantic civil war now rages in 
our country, must sorely chasten our joy, and the lights 
that God has showed us are made tremulous by our 
tears. 

But let us not make our case worse than it is, lest we 
tempt God to allow it to become what we report it to 
be. Allow me therefore to caution you against an un- 
scrutinizing admission of wholesale declarations to the 
effect that war, even civil war, is the worst calamity 
that can come upon a nation. General anarchy is many 
times more fearful. And let us challenge the proof 
when we hear it affirmed, or intimated that war, even 
civil war is either necessarily demoralizing, or that it is 
the most expensive of either blood or treasure of all 
national evils. Far from it. Tb.e money and blood 
now expended in reinstating our Ijlessed government 
over our undivided country, may, and by the blessing 
of God will prove the mos: economical outlay a nation 
ever made ; for it will give a stal^le government to gene- 
rations of ever-multiplying millions ; and to agriculture, 
commerce and the arts, a peaceful empire, in which for 
centuries to accumulate their treasures. And if war is 
ever justifiable, it is a contradiction to say that it is 
necessarily demoralizing. And that defensive war is 
justifiable, we have only to appeal to the common sense 
and common instincts of mankind. Only the merest 
handful of men ever thought of denying it. And that a 
state of war is not necessarily a state of demoralization to 



11 

either the nation or the soldiery, we may appeal iir«t, to 
the Old Testament history. 

Joshua led some hundreds of thousands of men to the 
conquest of Canaan. They fought most terrific battles. 
They performed the most wholesale military executions. 
Were they therefore and thereby demoralized ? So 
far from this, it is generally' agreed that among the 
generations of Israel, that which entered and conquered 
Canaan under Joshua, excelled in ^^urity and in fidelity 
to God. " And the people served the Lord all the days 
of Josliua, and all the days of the Elders that outlived 
Joshua, who had seen all the great works of the Lord 
which he did for Israel." 

Neal, in his history of the Puritans, gives us some 
interesting testimony upon the moral condition of our 
mother-land, during the civil wars in the middle of the 
seventeenth century : — 

'' There was an uncommon spirit of devotion," he 
writes, " in the Pari ament quarters. The Lord's day 
was observed with remarkable strictness, the churches 
being crowded with numerous and attentive hearers, 
three or four times a. day. There was no travelling on 
the road, or walking in the fields, except in cases of 
absolute necessity. Religious exercises were set up in 
private families, and were so universal that you might 
go through the city of London on the evening of the 
Lord's day, without seeing an idle person, or hearino- 
anything but the voice of prayer and praise." 



12 

A daily prayer-meetiiig of one hour — there is nothing 
new under the sun — was estabhshed in London, sug- 
gested by the fact that requests for prayer sent to the 
pulpit were so numerous, that there was not time so 
much as to read them. 

With regard to the army itself, we quote from Ma- 
cauley : " But that which chiefly distinguished the 
army of Cromwell from other armies, was the austere 
morality and the fear of God, which pervaded all ranks. 
It is acknowledged by the most zealous royalists, that 
in that singular camp no oath was hea,rd, no drunken- 
ness nor gambling seen, and that during the long domi- 
nion of the soldier}^, the property of the peaceable citi- 
zen and the honor of women, were held sacred." 

Let us then do our duty as Christians to that noble 
soldiery, that have interposed their bodies between 
rebellion and our country's heart, and we need not 
fear the return upon us, at the war's close, of hordes 
of demoralized men. 

Li enumerating the lights God has showed our nation 
the past year, we name first of all : The sjxwing to us 
our National Government and our National Capital. 

Patients sometimes sink very low. The cheek be- 
comes paler and paler, the eye dimmer and dimmer, the 
pulse feebler and feebler. The sufferer, feeling himself 
in the inexorable grasp of the Dread King, shivering 



13 

under his icy breath, Ijids farewell to sun, moon and 
stars, farewell to earth and friends, and resigns himself 
to his fate. And yet after all, to the surprise of him- 
self, his physician and his friends, he rises again and 
goes forth from that sick chamber, a healthier man than 
he had been for many a long year before ! 

During the past year our National Government has 
been down in the dark valley of the shadow of death. 
We felt through our own frames the tremors of its 
coming dissolution. A nightmare of distressing appre- 
hension was upon us. Our last thought at night, our 
first thought in the morning, was of our country. In 
our dreams, Ave saw our Seat of Government in the 
hands of insurrectionary chiefs, and over the great 
dome of our capitol, the loathed standard of rebellion 
waving. In our imaginations we saw State loosening 
from State, and then itself dissolving into fragments; 
our nation gone ; our history become a mysterious illu- 
sion ; our hopes faded forever ! In our distress, we 
fasted and prayed — prayed alone in the closet, and as 
we walked the streets — prayed together in the pulpit 
and in the prayer-meeting. 

And a merciful God pitied our distress, and lent a 
kindly ear to our petition, and to-day we rejoice with 
joy unspeakable in the possession of our Government, 
still, — we say it with reverence, — "fair as the moon, 
bright as the sun and terrible as an army with ])an- 



14 

ners ;" and that Government, blessed be the Father of 
Lights, still at its own old home at Washington ! 

Beloved — God is the Lord which has given us this 
light — " bind the sacrifice with cords, even with horns 
to the altar !" 

Secondly. — God has sJinived us light during this ijear, 
in the fact that the actual ravages of ivar have been con- 
fined exclusively to those States, in ivhicli armed men have 
th7'ust at the heart of our government. Li all the loyal 
States, not a wheat-stalk has been trodden down hy the 
soldier s foot, not a family has been driven by fright or 
violence from its home, not a square foot of soil has 
been moistened with blood. 

Say we this in exultation over the miseries of our 
fellows in the other States ? God forbid ! It broke our 
hearts when they reloelled, and our hearts have bled 
for them as we have read of their sufferings. But surely 
there is a righteous justice in this infliction of the chief 
miseries of this war upon those who have so wantonly, 
so causelessly, so cruelly drawn the nation into it. 

Thirdly. — God the Lord hath showed us light, in the 
disclosure to us of the existence among our people of a 
profound and universal spirit of patriotism. 

So admirably adjusted was our political machinery, 
so almost self-acting, that w^e had come to think little 
more al)out it than we do of the ordinar}^ operations of 
nature. It had come imperceptibly to be regarded 
somewhat like the old family clock on the stairs; the 



15 

solemn tick answering to any questions that now and 
then stole into the mind, as to how long that clock 
would run, or when the faithful pendulum would cease 
to swing — 

" Forever — never ! 
Never — forever !" 

But by-and-by the suspicion w^as awakened, that faith- 
less men had been tampering with the old timepiece. 
The impression gained ground and sank deeper. At 
length the conviction flashed like lightning through 
the land, that that pendulum, seized by rebellious men, 
was about to cease its swinging — that the heart of the 
nation under pressure of misled, disloyal citizens, was 
about to cease its beatings, and twenty millions arose 
with a wail and a shout, and ejaculated — " No ! we are 
not ready to see our nation die !" 

And such a breaking up of the fountains of the great 
deep of patriotism as followed, this w^orld had never 
seen ! It gushed forth from the heart of young man 
and maiden, old men and children. We heard of one 
old mother in Israel, who begged with her dying words 
that her corpse might be wrapped in the Hag of her 
country. Purses were emptied, and hands set to work 
in a labor of as ardent a love as ever moved a patriot to 
action. In it, every family, everyVank, every age covet- 
ed a share. Jew^eled fingers, that had been familiar 
thus far only with the piano-keys, the strings of the 
guitar, now made acquaintance with the thimble and 



16 

the knitting-needle. Even cliilclren were proud to con- 
tribute their mite; even the very poor made heavy 
sacrifices that our soldiers who went forth to hold the 
shield over the nation's breast, might be furnished with 
clothing and with Bibles ! And it is on the bosom of 
this flood of patriotism, that the national ark is riding 
out the perils of the hour. 

And the very fact that our government had found 
its way so deeply into the heart of the nation, demon- 
strates that it was worthy to be thus loved — worthy to 
be defended with all of life and treasure that we have 
to give. Bind then the sacrifice with cords, even unto 
the horns of the altar ! 

Further — God hath showed us light, in the development 
of a jpoiver in our government, as gigantic as it was un- 
suspected. 

It is not, Ave verily believe, a mere " American boast," 
that there is not that other government under the sun 
that could have withstood for one week, the shock 
which was visited upon our own. If the Chartist up- 
rising in England in '48, drove her noble Queen in ter- 
ror from Buckingham palace to the Isle of Wight, an 
uprising like ours would have overturned the British 
throne. 

Much less do we believe that any other government, 
in similar circumstances, with the folds of that huge ana- 
conda about its neck and body and limbs, could have 
achieved anything like the herculean results, which in 



17 

the past nine months have rolled from the hands of 
ours, could have put such armies, so equij)ped into the 
field, and launched such fleets upon the sea. 

Our keen-sighted foes of the old world, whoever and 
wherever they may be, are more thoroughly alive than 
ever to the truth, that between the Atlantic and Pacific 
there resides a youthful giant, Avhich must soon be 
effectually crippled, or ere long tremblingly obeyed. 
And we will not doubt that God has confided this 
power to our nation for our good, and the good of the 
race, and for his glory. 

Again, God Jiath showed us light in relieving our 
minds from distressing apprehensions with regard to our 
poor. When the hum of the factory began to cease, 
when every newspaper told us of twenty hands dis- 
charged here, and fifty there, and hundreds on the 
right hand and on tlie left, our hearts quaked with 
fears of overwhelming calamities to the poor. The ter- 
rible suggestions of those wliose wishes took the form of 
prophecy, our imaginations too readily transformed 
into stern, terrific realities; and already we saw the up- 
turned faces of pale, starving multitudes, and our streets 
the scene of violence and riotous outbreaks. 

But what a light hath God showed us! From all 
that we can learn by inquiry and from personal obser- 
vation, we feel justified in saying that there is quite 
as little, if not actually less, of suffering among the 
poorer classes at this hour, than there has loeen at this 



18 

time of year these last live years. And it is among the 
astonishing compensations we enjoy in the midst of our 
ills, that just where we looked for sorrow we find joy, 
and where we dreaded starvation we see bread in com- 
parative abundance. 

Once more, God hath shoioed us light in our orchards, 
cornfields and granaries. 0, had the fields proved as 
faithless as man ; had this year been one of famine, as 
well as of war ; had the crops proved even deficient to 
any considerable extent, what untold ills had been our 
lot! 

But how has it fared with the toils of husbandry ? 
How has God, in his providence measured out the trea- 
sures of sunshine and shower, upon meadow and hill- 
side ? What a story is told in the fact, that in addi- 
tion a large last year's surplus, God has given us a crop, 
including all the grains, and also the yield of potatoes, 
of fourteen hundred millions of bushels, several times 
as much as our nation can consume in a single year ! 

But there is another ray in this beam of light. For 
twenty years Northern Enterprize has been employed 
in uniting our remotest West with our Atlantic borders, 
by means of great thoroughfares of railway and lake 
navigation, little dreaming — how was it possible even 
to dream? — that a gigantic rebellion would precipitate 
all the vast commerce of the Mississippi upon those 
thoroughfares ? And now these treasures of the west 



19 

find eas}^ access to the storehouses and markets of the 
east. 

But there are other rays still in this light-beam. The 
day has gone by when America can find security from 
foreign interference in her own insignificance. The 
lightning smites the tall tree, and God has cast out the 
heathen, and planted a tree here, against which angry 
thunderbolts have been long in preparation from beyond 
the seas. In the nature of things it could not be other- 
wise. Influences that go hence to European shores 
have been for many years elevating the masses, and 
working a corresponding depression of those towering, 
buttressed, ivy-grown aristocracies. There is nothing 
that dies willingly, and least of all things, the human 
sceptre-holder. And hence — what should no more sur- 
prise us, than that the master should object to change 
places with the servant — they for whom Sir Edward 
Bulwer Lytton speaks, honestly declare that — '' The dis- 
solution of the American Union, would be in itself con- 
sidered beneficial to the world. America was becoming 
too strong — so strong as to menace Europe. Separation 
not into two, but into three or four commonwealths, 
would relieve the Avorld of a fear." 

What then was to hinder such an interference on the 
part of foreign powers, as might seriously protract the 
struggle in which we are engaged, if not actually plunge 
us into irretrievable ruin ? 

But God hath showed us light in this dark quarter. 



20 

From some source, at least one hundred and forty mil- 
lions of bushels of grain, some nine thousand cargoes, 
must find their way to the shores of France and Eng- 
land the present year, and of this, a very large propor- 
tion must come from our storehouses. Is there not a 
kindly providential light in the fact, that, for the first 
time in the history of the world, there should concur 
such an enormous overplus on our part, with a corres- 
ponding deficiency on the part of western Europe? 
Thus God has put the nations, whose interference we 
most dreaded, under most solemn bonds to keep the 
peace with us, and at the same time has opened streams 
of foreign gold into our coffers, to enable us to carry on 
the work of reinstating our noble constitution over all 
our land. 

Bind then. Beloved, the sacrifice with cords, even 
unto the horns of the altar ! 

But our country is not the only precious name in our 
vocabularies. Another, sweeter than we can tell is 
Home. The family is an institution more ancient than 
civil government, and the latter derives no little of its 
immeasurable importance from its relations to the for- 
mer. The family is the scene alike of our sweetest and 
bitterest hours, and whenever we are called, on thanks- 
giving day, to enumerate the lights God hath showed 
us, we instinctively cast our eyes along the path the 
family has been led. 

And when Ave group before our minds the families 



21 

connected ^vitli a congregation, and make inquiry after 
their experiences for a year, how varied is the reply ! 

Here is a family, representing others fewer or more 
numerous, on whom since last we met as we now meet, 
the sun has risen and set three hundred and sixty-five 
times, at each rising imprinting a kiss of blessing, and 
at each diurnal adieu, departing with a smile ! No 
cheek has lost its hue, no eye its lustre, no tongue its 
voice, and this morning an unbroken band, it joined in 
the orisons around the family altar ! how gently, 
how sweetly those hours came and departed ! the un- 
numbered blessings to these our homes of the year that 
has just gone by! In what balances can we weigh 
them — by what arithmetic can we compute their value ! 

ye families, that have come up to these courts this 
morning, through three hundred and sixty-five days and 
nights of blessing — come with us while we bind our 
sacrifice of thanksgiving with cords, even unto the 
horns of the altar ! 

2 . Here is a family representing another group of house- 
holds, which during the year has sent fathers, brothers 
and sons to this camp, and to that battle-field, and who 
yet rejoice in the safety and health of all. The num- 
ber that represent these families in our country's service 
in this trying hour, is not very small. In husbands, 
sons and brothers, we have been present in the earlier 
actions near Harper's Ferry, in the sad affair near Lees- 
l)urg, at Port Eoyal, and at the mouth of the Missis- 



22 

sippi. At Ball's Blufis, one of those young men disap- 
peared among the missing ; one, two, three, four weeks 
rolled over his parents in the keen anguish of suspense 
— ignorant whether he fell on the field by a sudden or 
a lingering death, whether he was drowned, or whether 
he was taken prisoner. At length however, the precious 
letter came — " Dear Father, I am alive and well." And 
we believe that after all the exposures by land and sea, 
in camp, march and battle, not one drop of blood has 
been drawn from the veins of those dear to you as your 
own lives ! 

Beloved — It is God the Lord which hath show^ed you 
this light — " Bind the sacrifice with cords even unto 
the horns of the altar." 

3. Some of you during the past year, have encoun- 
tered extreme financial embarrassments, and have ex- 
perienced days darker, and nights of more intense 
anxiety than you had ever feared. Fortunes have 
melted away like frost before the sun. Many a noble 
ship has been blown ashore in the gale; men of as 
pure, exalted integrity, as ever blessed society, have 
had their hearts wrung with the anguish, of wdiich only 
lofty spirits are capable, through inability to meet finan- 
cial engagements. And yet after all, who wdll say to- 
day that in the darkest hour light was not given ? And 
is there one among you all to-day, who in view of the 
aggregate mercies of the year, does not cordially join in 



23 

our song — " God the Lord hatli showed us light — bind 
the sacrifice with cords even to the horns of the altar." 
4. But what shall we say of another class of families 
in our midst, whose homes during the past year have 
been overshadowed with the clouds of bereavement — into 
and out of whose doors the undertaker, and the funeral 
company have gone? Is there not something like 
mocker}', bitter mockery, in calling to thanksgiving 
festivities our brothers and sisters according to the flesh, 
wh(5 have so lately been called to deposit their dearest 
earthly treasures in the cold, dark grave ? 

We have, in imagination, stood upon a high bluff, 
jutting out into the sea; the rain and hail, how pite- 
ously they came down ! The tempest, how it raged ! 
The clouds, how dense and dark ! And the sea how 
wild its watery tumult ! And out on that tormented 
ocean we saw a vessel — sails gone, masts gone, covered 
with ice, and every surge we thought must be its last ! 
And there stood a man at the wheel, resolute, un- 
daunted! And through all, there he stood, and by 
God's blessing he conquered the storm, wind and wave, 
and brought that disabled vessel victorious into port ! 

And we have stood, not in imagination, upon a l^luff 
that jutted into the sea of human sorrow ! And how 
pitilessly the storm fell ! For a time the anguish was 
too keen for consolation, and we could only look on, 
while our heart bled for the sufferers ! And yet have 
we seen the strong man and the feeble woman, stand 



24 

ull tlirougli such a storm of sorrow, with a l^row radiant 
with light from the burning throne, cahii, trustful, sub- 
missive, and on every feature, in every line of the coun- 
countenance, he who ran might read — " Not my will, 
))ut thine Lord be done!" And those sons and 
daughters of sorrow, have come out of that conflict more 
than conquerors through him that hath loved us! They 
have gone forth purified, sanctified, ennobled from that 
baptism of distress. 

And Beloved, we verily believe, that of all who hold 
thanksgiving service with us here to-day, there is no 
soul that responds with more profound cordiality to the 
call — " Come ! bind the sacrifice with cords even to 
the horns of the altar," than these very children of sor- 
row ! For next to the gift of Jesus, in saving faith 
Heaven, in all the affluence of her treasures, has not 
another more precious tlian that of gracious submission 
under bereavement. 

Finally — Some of you, we are persuaded, can say with 
an overflowing heart, " God hath shown us the light of 
many a spiritual joy, since last we met." 

Some here, whom the last thanksgivino; sun saw " in 
the gall of bitterness and ])onds of iniquity," to-day 
carry the jewels of Christian faitli and love in their 
hearts, and wear upon their brow Hope's morning star. 
(Rev. ii : 28.) Some moment of the past year has been 
signalized by that victory, more memorable than any 
ever won ])y the soldiery of the nations, in which n-n 



25 

immortal soul lias Ijroken from the fetters of sin, and 
rushed into the glorious liberty of the children of God. 
And to all eternit}' the day, the hour, the moment of 
this transition from death to life, Avill glow in your 
memories ^vith a lustre, that nothing can eclipse ! Bind 
thou then, new-]3orn soul, bind thou the sacrifice with 
cords, even to the horns of the altar ! 

And some of you Beloved, have during the year re- 
ceived revelations, enjoyed faith-visions of the Lamb; 
have been favored with seasons of pure, elevated devo- 
tion; have enjoyed a conscious girding with spiritual 
strength, that have wrought your spirits into new and 
decided conformity with your Lord ; and now you not 
only sing — 

•> One sweetly solemn thought 
Comes to me o'er and o'er, 
I'm ueai'cr home to-day 

Than I ever have been before." 

But you can also say, " I have this year been enabled 
more than during any other year of my life thus far, to 
' put on the Lord Jesus Christ.' " Noav with more unc- 
tion and spiritual fervor than ever you can say — 

•' Here Lord I give myself away, 
'Tis all that I can do 1" 

And of all the glad company that this day encom- 
pass our thanksgiving altar, who have better reason 



26 

tliaii such to exclaim — "' God the Lord hath showed 
us light — bind the sacrifice with cords even unto the 
horns of the altar !" 

And what sacrifice to-day becomes us, and the altar 
around which we gather — what but a new and solemn 
offering, here in the presence of the Father and the Son 
and the Holy Ghost, of body, soul, spirit, time, talents, 
and fortune, all to "' Him that loved us and washed us 
from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us 
kings and priests unto God and his Father — to whom 
be for ever and ever, amen and amen !" 



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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




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